I have this red folder. It is full of knitting patterns that I had designed and created all by myself. It has essays that I have written to go along with the designs. It is full of scribbles and doodles and things I crossed out. It is drawn out with graph paper and written out on notebook paper. It is my first full-length feature book that I completed. It is all about knitting. I designed all these patterns, all by myself. Well, ok, I did have a little help. Barbara Walker and her amazing stitch pattern books did come into play somewhat, especially when I started to work up the shawls. I wrote things out in pen. I wrote things out in pencil. I counted and I calculated and I thought about things. I worked and re-worked ideas, trying to get things to come together the way I want them to come together. I worked hard to get things to turn out beautifully.
So, now, what is holding me back? Why are the pages in this folder not all typed up and printed out and illustrated with wonderful full-color photographs? Why have I not begun to submit this book to publishers? Or even turned to publishing online?
Some of the projects have photos that were taken as I worked them up, writing down the pattern as I knitted and created. The rest of the projects have rough hand-drawn scrawls attached to them, or at least close to them, scattered over three little pocket notebooks that I carried with me everywhere during the creation of these patterns. Some days I look at this folder and I want to cry.
No one else knows what this folder contains. It is one of the few folders in my house, in my grasp, that I am using, that I did not jot some working title or some vapid detail upon the cover so that I and usually I alone may then identify it. The dog has stomped on it with muddy feet. My son has knocked it across the floor in one of his whirlwind adventures. My daughter has nearly spilled who knows what on it who knows how many times. No matter where I put this folder, it always comes out again, as if by magic, to sit within my sight.
The book itself wants me to write. It wants me to finish things out. It wants me, longs for me, to reach for yarn and needles, even hooks this time around, to create something profound, that I created all by myself. Such a coup for my ego, to know this I could do. This I did do. And all by myself. I just need that little push to force myself on, to move forward, and not to dwell within my fears.
